ABSTRACT
The role of financial organisations is to act as intermediaries providing a service targeted at either those who hold savings funds and wish to invest in the financial markets, or those who have a need for monetary resources. This chapter proposes to examine the social and political construction of the quality of a particular financial service – asset management. It succinctly describes the activity of fund management delegation that takes place between institutional investors and asset management corporations. The chapter focuses on the quality of the financial service. It discusses that the financial relationship cannot singularly be reduced to the returns yielded; rather, it is built through a collection of social and political arrangements. Financial services comprise a collection of co-assembled arrangements which qualify, define and frame the financial relation. With regards to what should be the economic, social and political utility of financial intermediation, no long-term perspectives are considered within the social construction of the quality of financial service.
